


Kiss Me Once Again

by sapphic_ambitions



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Domestic Bliss, Established Relationship, Fluff, I said FLUFF MOTHER FUCKER, Immortal Husbands, M/M, Nile & Andy come in at the very end, Post canon, Wack, can u imagine loving someone for 900 years
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:54:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25775446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphic_ambitions/pseuds/sapphic_ambitions
Summary: Nicky cooks dinner, Joe distracts him.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 43
Kudos: 583





	Kiss Me Once Again

**Author's Note:**

> I did zero research about anything going into this. xoxo

  1. **The Scottish Countryside**



In almost a thousand years, there was one thing Joe knew he would never tire of. 

Clothing styles would come and go. Music would change with the times. Languages would evolve and so would humanity’s understanding of itself.

But the sight of Nicky cooking?

No, he’d never get tired of that. 

Joe, obviously, could cook, too. They often made meals together, or took turns with their favorite recipes that had long been forgotten by the rest of the world. But if Joe could get away with just sitting back and watching Nicky at work? He’d take it.

Especially tonight, with rain gently coming down on their cottage and a classics radio station ( _ Classics _ , what shit. It’s jazz music from the 1940s. Barely classic at all. He’d show them  _ classic _ .) playing softly in the background? With Nicky looking like a damn dream as he hummed along to the music and gently swayed his hips as he chopped his ingredients?

Nine hundred years and Joe had never felt more in love. 

“I should get you one of those aprons,” He said softly in Italian and leaning against the counters. 

The sleeves of Nicky’s shirt were rolled up to his elbows, and he was going through the process of prepping his ingredients. Little bowls of garlic and herbs and shallots and mushrooms and such dotted the countertops alongside whole tomatoes. Nicky looked up at him with a small smile. “What aprons, my love?” He replied in the same tongue.

“The ones that say  _ Kiss the Cook _ ,” Joe said, laughter creeping at the edge of his voice. 

Nicky chuckled, slicing through a tomato and then teasingly wave the knife at his lover. “Ah, but then no cooking would get done, and we would never eat,”

“Oh, we would eat,” Joe said, winking.

Nicky laughed, an honest laugh that lit up his entire face, and it lit up Joe’s entire soul. “Do you suppose we could get by on that alone, Yusuf?” 

“My heart,” Joe said, slipping into Arabic to call Nicky his favorite endearment. “I believe you and I could do anything together,”

At that, Nicky put down his knife and pulled Joe for a kiss. It was a sweet and sincere kiss, with Joe’s hands wrapping around Nicky’s waist and Nicky’s hands going up to cup Joe’s face. He could smell the rosemary on his lover’s hands, and it just made the moment sweeter. The kiss didn’t last very long, as Nicky pulled away to rub his thumbs on Joe’s cheekbones and press their foreheads together, but it still made him feel like he was floating.

“ _ You _ are my heart,” Nicky said, and Joe  _ melted. _ Nine  _ hundred _ years together and his love could still knock the breath out of his lungs with a simple line and a kiss. 

Nicky kissed him again swiftly before slipping out of Joe’s hands and back to the counter. “See?” He said, picking up his knife. “No cooking gets done when we are kissing,”

Joe laughed, and leaned against the counter again, crossing his arms. “Well, it’s a good thing I like watching you cook anyway,”

Nicky raised an eyebrow and cocked a grin as he resumed chopping the tomatoes. “Does that do it for you?” He asked, switching to Italian. “Watching me in the kitchen?”

“It’s nice to see you use a knife for something other than killing,” He responded, but he kept his words in Arabic. “More soothing to watch it cut through tomatoes than someone’s throat,”

Nicky hummed in agreement. “You know what I like? Watching you sketch,” He said, sliding the tomatoes into another bowl. “You get this look of concentration. It’s intoxicating. And it reminds me of another face you make,” He said, winking at Joe over his shoulder.

“ _ Nicoló, _ ” He teased, and Nicky grinned at him.

“What?” Nicky teased back. “I could be referring to anything,”

“But you’re not,”

“But I’m not,”

“What are you making, anyway?” Joe asked, now in English. It seemed that these days most of their casual conversations happened in that language. They kept their hearts and secret words for each other in the languages they’d known the longest. The languages they’d met each other in.  _ English  _ was not for discussing matters of the heart and soul. It was for discussing food and occasionally football.

Nicky shrugged. “Nothing special,” He said, following suit and switching to English. 

“Everything you make is special,” He said, and Nicky scoffed.

“Yes, except for-”

“Greece, 1534, I remember. And I told you, you’re forgiven,”

“But haven’t forgotten, clearly,” Nicky said, turning on one of the burners to start the water for the pasta. “What if this winds up being just as terrible?”

“Then you will have to take care of me when I get food poisoning,” Joe declared, “All five minutes that I am sick, you must tend to me,”

Nicky grinned, and leaned over to kiss his temple. “Deal,”

“When are Andy and Nile supposed to get back?” Joe asked as Nicky began cleaning up his work space, clearly satisfied with his ingredients. Nicky was always good about making sure everything was prepped and ready to go before he actually began cooking, unlike their beloved Nile who was infamous for throwing shit together and frantically running around the kitchen to get what she needed. The whole team took turns cooking, as was only fair, and their youngest member had a lot to learn.

“Soon. Just in time for dinner,” Nicky responded, moving around Joe to place the cutting board to the sink. “I imagine they will be hungry after their mission,”

“I don’t know why they insisted on going alone,” Joe huffed. “If we had gone, the mission would have taken half as long and I wouldn’t just be sitting here worrying about Andy,”

Nicky rolled his eyes. “You have to trust them, Joe,”

Joe frowned. “I do trust them,” He protested. “I just worry about them, also,”

Nicky placed a gentle hand on his arm and looked at him with adoring eyes. “I know,  _ mi amore _ , but I think they needed this mission to prove to themselves that they could do it without us,”

“I hate it when you’re right,”

“No, you don’t,”

“No, I don’t,”

“Besides,” Nicky said, turning back to his cooking. “It’s given us some nice alone time,”

“A whole week of getting to walk around without pants on,” Joe sighed. “They don’t know what they’re missing, Nicoló,”

Nicky shot him an amused look. “You don’t even wear pants when they are here, Joe,”

“I know, but this week no one was complaining about it,” He shot back, and his lover laughed. 

They then slipped into a comfortable silence as Nicky continued working and as Joe continued watching him. Soon the kitchen was filled with the sounds of sizzling garlic and bubbling water over the radio, still playing that awful jazz music. Joe debated going to get one of his sketchbooks so he could capture Nicky in his element, but it was too far away and he didn’t want to leave this moment. 

But Joe could never stay quiet for long.

“I don’t know what it is about this music you like, Nicky,” He said, this time in Italian. “It all sounds the same,”

Nicky looked over at him from where he was stirring his tomato sauce with a wooden spoon. “You don’t think it’s romantic, my love?” He said back in the same tongue. “Does it not tug at your heart strings?”

“It’s shit,”

“Yusuf,” Nicky scolded.

“It’s so  _ boring, _ ” Joe groaned.

Nicky scoffed, but his eyes were amused. “Listen to the music, Yusuf,” He said, Arabic this time, while setting aside his freshly strained pasta. “Doesn’t it make you want to dance with me? Doesn’t it make you want to write sonnets? Doesn’t it make you want to sweep me off my feet and carry me off into the sunset?”

“Your ass in those jeans accomplishes that just fine,” He muttered back, in English, gently swatting at the ass in question as Nicky moved around him again. 

Nicky laughed, setting down whatever it was he had been holding (Joe hadn’t been paying attention, not when his lover’s ass was being discussed) and turned to give Joe his undivided attention. He stepped into Joe’s space, crowding him against the counter and hands sneaking around his waist. 

“I think you just wanted my attention, didn’t you?” Nicky asked, slipping into English as well, and Joe couldn’t stop the grin that spread across his face. He’d definitely been caught. “I thought you said you _ liked _ watching me cook,”

“Oh, I do,” Joe replied, rubbing his lover’s shoulders. “But I like having your attention more,”

Nicky tilted his head, and his smile was as soft as the rain outside. “So now that you have my attention, what will you do with it?”

“Hmmm,” Joe said, running his hands up and down Nicky’s chest. “I think I will follow your earlier suggestion _ ,”  _ He pulled away from the counter, out of Nicky’s grasp and to the open space in the kitchen. He gave Nicky a small smile, a gentle one that was only ever exchanged between the two of them, and held out his hand. “Dance with me,  _ habibi _ ?” 

“Always,  _ mi amore,”  _ Nicky said, like it was the most wonderful thing in the world.

Joe pulled him in close, intertwining their hands and wrapping his free hand around Nicky’s waist. His lover, in turn, wrapped his free hand around Joe’s shoulders as they began swaying together. 

Over the years, they had learned many dances together, from many different countries and for many different occasions. But this? Gently swaying together in the kitchen together on a rainy day? That was the only dance that mattered. 

They swayed together to a song that Joe actually recognized. They might have known the composer, back in the day, or it might just be one that Nicky sang often while he pittered around the kitchen, and in fact, he sang it now.

“ _ You’ll never know how many dreams I dreamed about you,”  _ Nicky sang softly, pressing his forehead against Joe’s. “ _ Or just how empty they all seem without you,” _ He sang, looking adoringly into Joe’s eyes.

And Joe? 

He was so in love he might have died and come back to life in that very moment. 

“ _ So kiss me once, then kiss me twice, then kiss me once again _ ,” Nicky sang, and Joe obliged, pressing soft and innocent kisses to Nicky’s jawline. “ _ It’s been a long, long time, _ ” 

He couldn’t tell you which one of them moved first, he just knew that the music swelled and they were kissing, a deep and sure one that could only reflect nine hundred years of devotion. A kiss that poets could only dream to capture in their written words. A kiss that was more soothing than any rainy day. A kiss that was more magnificent than any mountain line. A kiss that-

“Nile, you owe me fifty bucks,”

Joe and Nicky broke apart to see Andy and Nile standing in the living room, drenched from the rain and looking on amusedly. 

“Andy, Nile, you’re back!” Joe grinned.

“And dripping all over the carpet,” Nicky sighed.

“Did you bet on us?” Joe asked as he moved out of his lover’s arms to go hug their teammates. He didn’t even care that they were wet, he was going to hug his sisters, damn it. 

“Fifty bucks that you two would be kissing when we came in,” Nile grumbled, letting herself get pulled into a hug. “I had hoped better from you both,”

Nicky grinned at her, and swooped in to hug her right after Joe let go of her. “Does it help that we made dinner?”

“We?” Joe shook his head. “I did nothing. Nicky did it all,”

Nicky shrugged. “You kept me company,”

Andy rolled her eyes. “So what I’m hearing is that you distracted him while he cooked,”

“I abso-fucking-lutely did,” Joe grinned, hugging Andy tightly.

“I still enjoyed it,” Nicky said, and the four of them laughed. 

“Well, I don’t care who made it,” Nile said, shrugging off her soaked jacket. “I’m hungry and it smells good,”

Andy patted Nile’s shoulder and made her way into the kitchen. “Come on, kiddo. Nicky makes the  _ best  _ food, even when Joe distracts him,”

Nile shrugged and followed closely behind their leader, the two of them chatting away.

“Come on, Nicoló,” Joe said, taking his lover’s hand into his own. “Let’s eat,”

“And later,” Nicky said, stepping closer with a raised eyebrow. “We’ll eat again,  _ mi amore, _ ”

“ _ Nicky!”  _ Joe gasped, grinning wide. 

“Nope,” Andy called from the kitchen. “You two have had a whole week of that shit. Cut it out,”

The two of them simply grinned at each other before going to join the others, hands intertwined.

In almost a thousand years, there were many things that Joe would never tire of. The sight of Nicky cooking. Sunsets over the desert. The sound of rain against a window. 

And eating dinner with his family? Alongside whom he’s fought and died and killed for? 

No, he’d never get tired of that. 


End file.
